1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system maintenance, and more particularly to a method and system for creating an operating system quiescent state to perform maintenance on information handling system processing components.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems have grown steadily in complexity both in the number and types of hardware components used to build information handling systems and in the software components that rely on these hardware components to perform desired functions. Although the increased complexity generally provides improved performance and greater functionality, it also tends to involve increased maintenance and diagnostics to ensure that components operate properly together. For instance, common maintenance upkeep tasks include performing diagnostics periodically or when problems arise, flashing read only memory (ROM), presenting warning screens by the basic input/output system (BIOS) and backing up the system hard disc drive. Increased hardware component complexity also tends to result in increased demands on the operating system that coordinates interaction between hardware components. The WINDOWS operating system has evolved over time to manage the operation of hardware components including tracking the configuration of the information handling system to coordinate communication between the components.
One difficulty that arises during maintenance and diagnostics of information handling system components is that maintenance and diagnostics operations affects operating system interaction with system components as well as interaction between components themselves. For instance, ROM flashing, performance of certain diagnostics and hard disk drive backup generally require that the operating system be placed in a quiescent state in which configuration information maintained by the operating system is held consistent. As another example, display of BIOS warning screens generally requires an operating system quiescent state so that BIOS assertion of control over the display from the operating system driver does not interrupt the function of critical driver code. The conventional method for placing an operating system into a quiescent state is to boot to a secondary operating system that manages loading and execution of maintenance or diagnostics code and then re-boot into the primary operating system to ensure proper configuration of components and complete execution of the maintenance or diagnostics code. For instance, maintenance and diagnostics on an information handling system with the WINDOWS operating system typically is performed by booting to DOS and configuring the information handling system to execute the maintenance or diagnostics function on the next reboot before loading the WINDOWS operating system. However, placing an operating system into a quiescent state and rebooting to perform maintenance and diagnostics functions generally is a slow process that delays and frustrates information handling system users.